Divine Politicking: A Rhetorical Approach to Deity Possession in the Himalayas
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2016, Vol 7, Issue 9
Abstract
In North India, political leaders are referred to as netas ¯ , and the term netagir ¯ ¯ı is broadly and pejoratively used to describe the self-promotion, political maneuvering, and public rhetoric in which politicians engage. However, my ethnographic fieldwork in the state of Uttarakhand, India, shows that local divinities can also be netas ¯ : they vie for their constituents’ support, make decisions that materially impact people’s lives, and threaten to use force in implementing those decisions. These “political divinities” are routinely encountered as possessed dancers in large-scale public rituals in this region. In this article, I focus on how political divinities affect, and are affected by, audiences in tangible and far-reaching ways. I argue that public possession rituals open up a highly charged zone for inherently fluid, situational, and pragmatic negotiations between humans and divinities. While anthropological studies of possession view it as a sociopolitical event that trades in power relations, this article calls for a rhetorical approach to possession, which foregrounds possession as a way of persuading particular audiences of certain ways of thinking and acting in matters of collective importance.
Authors and Affiliations
Aftab Singh Jassal
Keywords
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- EP ID EP25611
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7090117
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